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Lego Part Names
Lego Part Names

In this newsletter, we’ll cover the common colloquial Lego Part Names - important to be able to build structures with a team and communicate efficiently

Go through this carefully and learn how each of the pieces work. If you find you’re short on pieces, you can

reach out to us for help⁠

. Also, at the bottom of this newsletter, we’ll include a few exercises you can do with your team to help solidify these concepts!

Did you know...

Six 2×4 LEGO bricks can be combined in more than 915 million ways.

Learning the Lego Pieces

Your teammate calls out “hey I think I need 4 9-beams, 8 double pegs, an H-box and 2 binoculars” — do you know what they mean?

Before you can make much progress in your Lego journey, we need to start with the basics. So, let’s start with talking about the names teams commonly use for the Lego Pieces.

Although there are hundreds of different types of Legos, we can break most of them up into 4 categories:

Category 1: Beams and Pegs: lengths, friction vs non-friction

Category 2: Structured Connectors: boxes and panels, same direction, change direction

Category 3: Axles and Gears: lengths, bevel gears, gear calculator

Category 4: Advanced Pieces: pneumatics, half pieces, chains/track, pulleys, weights

When you’re trying to describe a piece to someone, you would naturally describe what the piece looks like using descriptors like length, color, shape, etc. The names Lego has created are often descriptive of the use of the piece, but not of the physical look of the piece which can make them confusing to use to communicate with other people. So we’ve settled on some names that make more sense to us. Let’s go through each category and talk about what we’d call each piece...

Category 1: Beams and Pegs

The most basic and most important category of Legos are Beams and Pegs. You can make millions of structures with just these pieces, and it’s likely that your Lego pieces will be dominated by pieces from this category.

Beams

Beams are straightforward — we just name them by length: “can you hand me a 15 beam and a 5 beam?”

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There are a few interesting notes about beams:

All odd lengths, except 2: There are no beams of length 4, 6, 8, 10, etc.

Only one beam with axle holes: Other than the “2-beam with axle hole”, all other beams have only peg holes.

Pegs

Pegs are how we connect pieces together.

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The most important thing to note about pegs is the difference between friction and non-friction pegs. If you use a friction peg to build something, the pieces at the connection will not spin freely, whereas a non-friction peg will make the connection smooth and able to rotate. In general, if you want the structure to be rigid (i.e. not spin or turn) use friction pegs, if you want to be able to rotate at that peg (i.e. for wheels, scissor connections, etc.) use a non-friction peg.

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Category 2: Structured Connectors:

You can make a lot of structures with Beams and Pegs but you will soon learn that you need many pieces from this second category: Structured Connectors.

Single Direction Connectors

Let’s start with the most common and basic structured connectors: ones meant to connect in the same direction as your beams and pegs:

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The Ls and T are way more used than the angle pieces, but they are all strong pieces for the same purpose: connecting in one direction. Now, it’s a weird concept to understand exactly what that means, but imagine you have a corner (perhaps made of two beams) and you want to strengthen that connection. You could place a Big L on the joint and that would hold the connection together in 1 direction. As you’re building structures make sure you’re adding Ls to almost every joint!

Multi-direction connectors

Ok but what if you want to connect in two directions? E.g. you want to switch from horizontal to vertical?

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Another way to make things strong is to connect in multiple directions by using these turning connectors. The binoculars and trinoculars are especially useful since they have some peg holes as well as some pegs attached to them. Use these pieces to turn your connections and make even stronger connections.

Boxes and Panels

These pieces are amongst some of the most used pieces in all FLL structures. When in doubt, see if you can use a Box or Panel.

These pieces are the best of both of the other types of connectors — they can be used for connecting in the same direction and in a different direction. But the big bonus: they are structurally very strong as well!

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If you’re making a larger structure, always start with these pieces.

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Category 3: Axles and Gears

Now we’re ready to make things spin!

Axles

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Lego Part NamesLego Part Names